Cirri"Thank you kindly for nothing."
"You got more than you deserved."
"I didn't seek what I deserve. No amount of money can compensate for the ten years of emotional hell I endured with Nathan Middleton." Kate Middleton waved the check. "This is for my son's future."
She stared at Joshua Johnson's thin pinched lips, hollow cheeks, and cold pigeon eyes, then swung around and headed for the door. With her hand on the knob, she let her gaze sweep the staid office of Johnson and Jackson with its ancient markings of respectability, including the graying old man—attorney for her late husband's estate and a friend of the Middleton family—who didn't raise his head to look at her. She took it all in, opened the door, walked out and closed it gently. Then she turned around, wiped her feet on the doormat, headed down the hall and didn't look back.
Nathan Middleton hadn't intended to set her free, but that was what her husband of ten years had done when he mocked fate by test driving a new-line sports car. While he'd lived, he'd done his best to rule and control her, pampered her and tried to stash her away in their elegant home. Her rebellion had been a source of increasing friction between them. For ten years, she'd fluttered around with clipped wings, but now she'd show them all, including her in-laws, who'd told their son that he'd married beneath his status. The world would know that she could manage her life and take care of her child.
Two hundred and ninety thousand dollars, a pittance of an inheritance for her and her child from the only son of a rich family—but it was more than she needed to get her life in order. She stepped out into the street, tightened her jacket against the sting of the brisk April breeze, inhaled the Grosse Pointe, Michigan, air, and smelled its familiarity. She had to get out of that town, away from that house with its memories of what Nathan had told her about her in-laws and their unfair estimation of her. She walked rapidly, her mind bursting with visions of her future. For many of her thirty-eight years, life had shortchanged her, but she meant to correct that—beginning right then.
Four months later, having returned with her son, Randy, to Portsmouth, Virginia, where she'd had her only teaching job, the only place she knew besides Charleston, South Carolina, and Grosse Pointe, Kate embarked on her new life—managing the bookstore that she'd purchased with a portion of the money from Nathan's estate.
"You don't need that sitter. You can leave your boy here with me while you're at your store," Madge Robinson, her building superintendent, said. "I take care of the kids that live in this apartment building while their mothers and fathers are off to business."
Kate looked from the gnarled fingers and wrinkled and heavily veined hands to the lined, weathered face and the hair that hadn't grayed or ever been dyed, and she wondered how many of life's barbed-wire fences and spiked gates the poor woman had scaled. She jumped at every opportunity to babysit, and Kate suspected that the occasions gave her a chance to talk with her neighbors. Lonely hardly described her. She exhibited the energy of a fifty year old, but the appearance of an octogenarian.
"I'll take you up on that, Madge," Kate said, though she didn't want to be beholden to Madge or anyone else. "And I do thank you," she added, "but I want him to love books so, for now, he can sit in my store after school and read. When you do keep him, I'll pay you the going rate for sitters." She knew Randy would rather not be under her watchful eye, but she had to repair the damage that his father's overindulgence had caused, and that meant keeping a right rein on him.
Luke Stuart Hickson hugged Amanda and Amy, his sister-in-law and niece, and walked with Marcus to his car. "It's time you got to work on settling down, Luke," Marcus said to his older brother. "We'd be happier if your life was what you want it to be, and we know it isn't."
Luke inserted the key into the lock, opened the door of his blue Buick LeSabre, and looked off into the distance. "Yeah, but it isn't something I can manufacture. You know that. Don't forget that you backed into paradise kicking and screaming." He let a grin crease his mouth at the memory of it. "And look what you found. If I had a woman like Amanda, I wouldn't be here with you right now. See you next weekend."
An hour and forty minutes later, Luke turned off Route 17 onto Greenwood Drive in Portsmouth and headed home. He thought about what he'd do the rest of the day, his coveted Sunday off, and decided to get a bag of hamburgers and fries, pick up some Sunday papers and spend the day lolling around. He drove up Deep Creek Boulevard, stopped at Burgundy for the red light, and did a double take. Making certain that his eyes hadn't fooled him, he backed up, stopped and got out. No, it wasn't a mirage.
His steps quickened as he neared Kate's Friendly Bookstore.
A woman and small boy peered at him from behind the door, handcuffed together, their faces pressed to the glass. It didn't take him a second to figure out that they were prisoners. He tried the door. Locked, as he'd guessed. Too bad he wasn't wearing his uniform. He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, pulled out his badge, and held it so the woman could see it. If she recognized it as a policeman's identification, she didn't show it.
"Can you hear me?" he asked, but the woman didn't respond. Instead, her eyes grew larger, and tears began to trickle down the boy's face. He tried sign language, but got no response. There goes my Sunday. He tried to signal that he'd be back, then went to his car, got a knife and screwdriver, and picked the lock.
"I'm Detective Captain Luke Hickson," he told them when he got the door open. "What happened?"
She didn't appear to believe him, so he showed her his badge again. He gave her points for her caution; she had good reason. "I was locking up last night, and a man pushed us into the store, took the money from the cash register and said he was going to shoot us. I begged for mercy for my son, and he handcuffed us, took the store keys and locked us in. We've been here since nine last night. I'm… I'm so glad you came. My son, Randy, is starving."
He looked at her more closely. She had to be tired and miserable, but you'd never guess it from her bearing. She had an aura of dignity, strength and soft femininity, and she earned his respect when she didn't apologize for inconveniencing him. That would have smacked of dishonesty.
A half smile settled on her face as she glanced at her son. "You've been a great little trouper, Randy. I hope the captain can get these handcuffs off us soon, so we can get you something to eat." She looked at Luke for confirmation that their hands would soon be free.
"I'll do my best, ma'am, but it may take a while, so maybe you two want to go to the washroom before I start on these handcuffs."
He got the bunch of keys that he kept in the glove compartment of his car and examined them. "Let's get busy," he said when they returned. If none of the keys fit, he'd have to use a cutter.
"Suppose you can't find a key," Randy said, apparently anxious to end his ordeal.
"We'll get them off, with or without a key. It's just easier with a key." Another ten minutes is all I'm giving it, he told himself as one key after another failed to fit.
"That does it. We have to go to the station, but I'll stop along the way and get you some food. What do you want to eat, ma'am?"
He didn't imagine the relief that spread over her countenance. "Burgers, fries and milk for Randy. Buffalo wings, fries and coffee for me."
"I'm not drinking any milk," Randy said.
Luke let the boy have a steely gray-eyed stare. "Your mother said you're drinking milk, and if you want those handcuffs off, young man, you will drink milk. You got that?"
He'd have sworn that her look was one of thanks. The boy was probably a problem, but his uncouth behavior didn't so much as put a frown on her face, and he wondered about that. His olfactory sense triggered a masculine response. Her perfume again filled his head with ideas that had nothing to do with the work of a police detective, and he tried to shut it down. When he took her arm to help them into the back of his car, she turned to him, smiling, apparently to thank him, and the bottom dropped out of his belly. He stared into her greenish brown eyes, unable to shift his glance until Randy, in another display of bad manners, jerked his mother's arm. Get your act together, man, he cautioned himself.
He left them in the car and bought their food. Then he drove with them to his precinct on Crawford Parkway. "As soon as you finish eating, we'll start on those handcuffs," he said, and with a look at Randy added, "and that includes drinking all of your milk."
While they ate, he sent a clerk to get the details of their ordeal. "What's your name, ma'am?" Luke asked her as he began trying more keys in the handcuffs.
"Kate Middleton."
The sooner he freed their hands, the better; he did not relish standing that close to Kate Middleton for any length of time, touching her hands and… He shook himself out of it.
"Where're you from, Mrs. Middleton?" he asked, though he knew he'd find out as soon as he read the clerk's report. When she told him, he resisted asking her how she happened to make the jump from Grosse Pointe to Portsmouth, because that was personal, but he wanted to know all about her. With the fingers of her free left hand, she wiped perspiration from her brow. He' d already known she was getting warm, because her spicy perfume got stronger and stronger—teasing him, daring him to enjoy her nearness and to prolong the whole torturous experience. He'd recognize that perfume again if he smelled it in Timbuktu.
"Do you think it'll take much longer?" she asked.
"Can't say. I've got another fifty or so keys that I can try. Failing that, we'll cut them off, but that won't be fun." She glanced up and caught his gaze, and embarrassment reddened her flawless tan complexion. So she was attracted to ...
--This text refers to an alternate
Mass Market Paperback
edition.
